Areas of Interest: National identity in Russia/Soviet Union and United States from 1830-1930, and the history of the Cold War.
Abbott (Tom) Gleason is a long-time member of the Watson Institute's administration and faculty, as a Brown professor for over 30 years.
He served as the Institute's director from 1999 to 2000, and has held other positions including associate director, director for university relations and special projects, and senior fellow.
He is the former chair of Brown's History Department and a former director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.
His is editor of A Companion to Russian History (Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2009) and author of a memoir, A Liberal Education (TidePool Press, 2009).
He co-edited with Martha Nussbaum Nineteen Eighty-Four: George Orwell and Our Future (Princeton University Press, 2005) and Nikita Khrushchev (Yale University Press, 2000), with Sergei Khrushchev and William Taubman.